How a Ceramics Master Makes Plates for Michelin-Starred Restaurants — Handmade

It is very exciting to me that our company ships 300,350 pieces every day to many of the best

restaurants

in the world. Lots in USA, Canada, South America, Europe, we are in Australia, in the Middle East, now from time to time I will try. to calculate how many people eat from my dishes every day, quite a few of us operate almost the same way in the kitchen, we arrive early and what are we going to do that day, call to get our menu started with the preparation, the clay preparation, make sure having the right amount of raw materials preparing the scenarios so that there is definitely a rhythm for each day, it takes a lot of teamwork and coordination, and communication

makes

us feel more connected to the world of

restaurants

that interests us so much. we pass our clay. our clay mill that deaerates over time certain types of rock under certain conditions of pressure, humidity and heat, decompose and the clay forms small flat particles and that gives them their plasticity due to the way they unite with water, something that humans have used for thousands of years when doing what we do, we remove the canvas texture from the slab because if we left it there, the back of the plate would have a canvas texture, so now we are going to place our

plates

with all of our Different shapes are marked on this pastry ring when we make a 10 and a half inch interaction, we put it there when we make a salad plate, so this is our guide for our forming people.

The three types of clay are earthenware stoneware and generally still porcelain earthenware. Porous like terracotta pots, porcelain is more of a pure form of clay and is similar to higher fired stoneware, it is very hard, very low absorption, we work mainly with stoneware, a harder product, less porous, it really helps the tableware and gives us beautiful durability. finished product each mold has a corresponding leaf this is made of plexiglass and this is what shapes the face of the plate so we have more than 50 shapes that we can make here I will design a plate and make a drawing these are made of plexiglass so that I cut them and am constantly reshaping them.

This is a sheet that would have made the molds because you can see the outside. You can see the foot. This would make plaques. You can see how I design the. thickness, yeah, and then everything is adjustable too, so here's a coffee cup like here's a blade that forms the inside of a bowl, so we make all the molds here, we make all the tem

plates

here, we make all the blades here, that's what allows us to not only make a large number of pieces per day, but to make a large variety of pieces per day now I'm just looking at the space here so that the plate is the thickness that I want, with the smooth side down.

The restaurants we work for require consistency and a consistent product because you run a restaurant. One of the hardest things you can ask of a potter is for him to make hundreds of nice uniform dishes when he sees that he can have a uniform product with, you know, good

handmade

variation. That's what many of them are looking for and that's what we do. I took my first

ceramics

class in 9th grade, it's the kilns, the firing, the glazes, the smell when you walk into a studio, it just got me hooked right away. There is a small void in my edge, but if I gradually give it time, the clay will move, compress and fill.

See, now that the vacuum is full, I see a little bit of air bubbles in the clay, but not even that nice constant pressure. I want to move when I fire it, many other processes can leave a bit of memory in the clay which can return during firing in the form of warping. It's important to really take your time with this pressure that clay is everything. really compressed and happy, there is something beautiful about a

handmade

plate where each one will be unique, we leave just the minimum amount of handmade touch and that is always enough.

The first really big job was the Nomad Hotel in New York City. So this was an order of approximately 6000 pieces. He was practically working alone. In fact, I outsourced much of the work to Ohio. One piece they really couldn't get right was the coffee cup as they finished production. I was back here stressed. about how I was going to make 400 cups of coffee by the time they were opened, which now seems like something that would be very easy for us, but that's what led me to the process of jiggering, which is the process of placing a mold on a wheel and then you have an arm with a template attached and that's what has really opened the doors for us in terms of being able to make the entire collection ourselves.

Everything here, let it dry for about an hour to two hours and then it gets to this stage. called hard leather still wet but firm and workable and we trim the edge of the plate, very important for durability, so that you have a thick, rounded edge, not a thin edge, all you are doing here is making the outside of the plate look good because that's not going to be glazed, you want this to be pretty pristine, so after we finished the nomad, all I really wanted to do was take a month off, but their sister restaurant 11 Madison Park needed new plates , so it was kind of a... two hits, um, the eleven madison park stuff that we did in our studio here 100, that was a pretty amazing look and I think doing that work really helped the made tableware movement by hand to take hold because all of a sudden 11 madison park was using handmade stoneware all of a sudden. from other restaurants were really interested in it, there was kind of a line of restaurant tours and chefs waiting to work with us and talk to us now we are in about 250 restaurants during the bisque firing, which is the first firing we lasts about 24 hour process the heat removes all the water and burns off any remaining organic material that is in the clay around 1800 degrees this is the biscuit inventory so this is all of our dark clay this is all of our tan clay so we can take stacks of take the bowls out of here, glaze them, throw them in the oven tonight and tomorrow they'll be ready for the restaurant.

The glaze is the most important step because if you screw up that step, there's really no way to save the piece that the glaze is made up of. clay glass and flux and then some colorants or other minerals to give it color, you can then vary the proportions of these to give your glaze a more matte and glossier look. The key to glazing without many defects appearing is to have a good bisque if you have small gaps in your clay body that could cause holes in the glaze if you have a dirty piece of bisque the glaze may not stick it is all about even it out and then I wipe it off just to give it a little more crunch.

To that edge you can see how quickly the second firing dries, which is about 2200 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat and the thyme are working on the piece to melt the molten clay, that glaze fuses it all together into a really strong product, The ripening temperature refers to the right. amount of heat and time it takes for a body of clay to melt into a durable ceramic product, stoneware and porcelain will shrink 12 to 14 from wet to finished dish, well we buy clay which is formulated for cone six fire, so this is cone five and cone six, this is before, this is after and they measure temperature and time, so every shot we probably have at least half a dozen of these spread throughout the kiln to see how hot or cold they are The kiln is firing the enamel is about a 14 hour process and that's at 2200 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's going through so much heat melting, vitrifying and maturing all the minerals that are in the clay. This was fired at 1800 and glaze was applied the glaze is still dusty and loose once this is fired again this is what will come out of the kiln we will darken to this point there is still a fun aspect to opening the kiln every day there there's our matte green midnight moss this is our barista espresso cup that has a perfect curve at the bottom my largest 13 inch plate my philosophy as a designer is that I like to let the materials really speak for themselves one of the most important things I always think about what the food we are trying looks like think like a chef look at your menus look at your past experience not only do you know, we have developed a level of knowledge about what we do and how restaurants operate and what they need, we will also be here five or ten years in the future they will still be able to get the same four and a half inch coupe plate with dark clay and a certain glaze.

Now the onus is more on us to continue creating a really good product, something unique, handmade locally and something they can't get anywhere else.